“Just imagine becoming the way you used to be as a very young child, before opinions took over your mind. The real you is loving, joyful and free. The real you is just like a flower, just like the wind, just like the ocean, just like the sun.”

-Miguel Angel Ruiz

My work seeks to delve into our primal consciousness, conjuring the curiosity and un-biased perceptions of childhood. While in progress, my paintings become a doorway for me to enter and connect with a fresh awareness. I invite the viewer to join me in recalling the sense of belonging to a conscious universe we knew as kids.

Color speaks louder than shapes or images, especially as seen in children’s artwork. It expresses the mood and intensity of feeling within the picture. In a painting it may harmonize or clash, intensify or fade, excite or calm. My work is about how color creates a vivid impression and provides a sense of place.

Using acrylic on canvas, I compose my paintings with naturalistic shapes derived from landscapes and non-objective forms. My subjects originate from past observation and memory, with the focus on avoiding a literal version, and creating my own immediate impression.

I enjoy working within the tension that develops between the abstract and representational, sometimes combining recognizable and purely non-objective forms. While pushing the paint around, figures or landscapes sometimes appear, leading me down a different path. Using gestural brushwork, mark-making, and a vibrant color palette becomes a journey of process, and an opportunity to both experience and convey immediacy and spontaneity.